


I See Your Heart (And Raise You Mine)

by Ghostinthehouse



Series: Touch Me Not [6]
Category: Good Omens (TV), Good Omens - Neil Gaiman & Terry Pratchett
Genre: Crowley is Good With Kids (Good Omens), Discussion of war, Far Future, Mercy Killing, Multi, POV Outsider, Snake Crowley (Good Omens), The flaming sword used as a toaster, touch-averse Crowley
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-12-08
Updated: 2020-03-29
Packaged: 2021-02-25 20:49:25
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 19
Words: 11,578
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21711751
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Ghostinthehouse/pseuds/Ghostinthehouse
Summary: Beth shifted the baby's weight in her arms and stepped back out of everyone's way, painfully reminded that although she might have married into this huge, strange, family, she had no idea what went on here.
Relationships: Anathema Device/Newton Pulsifer, Aziraphale/Crowley (Good Omens), Warlock Dowling/Adam Young
Series: Touch Me Not [6]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1544365
Comments: 225
Kudos: 1122
Collections: Ixnael’s Recommendations, Ixnael’s SFW corner





	1. Arrival

"They're here! They're here!" The older children spilled out of the door, and Beth followed them, with the baby cradled in her arms to see what the fuss was about.

An antique car had drawn up outside the gate, all sleek black lines and gleaming paintwork of a sort she had never seen new. It did, Beth saw, have the tag on the numberplate that marked it as converted to an emission-free vehicle, so there was that. She shifted the baby's weight in her arms and stepped back out of everyone's way, painfully reminded that although she might have married into this huge, strange, family, she had no idea what went on here. Al hadn't said much other than warning her that it wasn't likely to be anything like anything she was used to, and not to be surprised at anything weird that happened.

Two men climbed out of the car, one in a dark coat over a fashionable black jumpsuit that clung to every bony angle of his body, and one in a pale coat over an old-fashioned suit. The one in the dark coat stooped into the back seat and drew out the living potted pine. He said something, laughing, to the children that Beth couldn't make out, and they backed up enough to circle round him as he carried the decorated-tree-to-be up the path and knocked on the open door.

He called lightly, "Permission to enter?"

A voice called back from inside, "Permission granted!"

Only then did he step over the threshold. His light-coated companion trailed after him with a case in each hand. He spotted Beth's half hidden shape across the garden, and smiled. For a moment she felt safe and wanted and welcomed. Then he vanished up a side staircase towards the bedrooms and took the sensation with him.

Beth trailed back inside in the midst of the throng and found herself back in the main room as the red-head made his careful way across the floor to set the tree in the spot left for it. The bearer of the tree fussed with it, and the swarming children (armed with ornaments now) held back until he had it positioned just right, completely ignoring the gaze of the family matriarch enthroned in her high backed armchair.

Beth flinched in on herself, remembering how Allium (Al, she called him mostly, at his request) had introduced her to his grandmother, and the piercing gaze that seemed to look straight into her head and heart, as if the ancient woman could see more than anyone else could. She'd felt like a small, guilty, child again, and dropped her gaze to baby Jonathan in her arms, resettling him.

The man straightened at last, dusting off his hands and then did turn to finally greet the woman crowned with a cloud of her own silver-white hair. He couldn't, she thought, have been more than half the matriarch's age. There were a few lines to his face, but no white in his red hair yet - and yet, the look between them wasn't his subservience to her, but a look of old friends, almost equals. "Hey, book-girl," he said softly. "How's it going?"


	2. Introductions

"Crowley?"

"Yes, angel?"

The light-coated man held out one of the mugs he was carrying, and the red-head - Crowley? - broke out a soft smile and came to take it. He somehow managed to drop onto one end of a small sofa without spilling anything. The other man - Angel? - sat more decorously on the other end of the sofa and sipped from his own mug.

Beth backed up a step to leave them alone while she found somewhere quiet to get off her feet. Crowley looked up at the movement, and his eyebrows climbed above his dark glasses. "You must be new. None of us bite, you know."

"Much," the matriarch corrected with a flicker of a smile.

Angel blinked and looked at Beth properly. "Oh, where are my manners?"

"Probably being used as a bookmark somewhere," Crowley muttered.

Angel flapped a hand at him. "Behave, dear." He turned back to Beth with a beaming smile. "I'm Aziraphale, and this is my husband, Crowley. Nice to meet you." He also raised an eyebrow, letting her fill in her name.

"Beth," she said, and in her arms, Jonathan woke and began to cry. "I should go..." she added, and made use of the excuse to flee.

***

"It's an odd family, I know," Al said, taking bottle and baby in his arms to give her a break. "Granathema's always had a tendancy to adopt waifs and strays into it, says she stopped being a professional descendent when she was young and became a professional ascendent instead. Gramp's a walking anti-tech field, and at least one of the cousins can charm anyone into anything. But those two - they're odd even by family standards."

"I noticed," Beth said, sprawling face down on her bed with relief.

"You haven't seen the half of it."

"No?"

"They don't age, Beth. They still look the same as they did when I was little. I don't know how old they actually are, but they're not as human as they look."

Beth rolled over and propped herself to stare at him. "Are you serious? Are they safe?"

"They're the family Trickster and Guardian, my mother told me. Safe enough, most times."

"Only most?" she asked, thinking of the baby.

"I've not seen it myself, but I've heard tales. The last time someone was fool enough to try and attack part of the family - well, I understand it was over very, very quickly. And none of the family were hurt."

She thought back and remembered the pair seated together on the sofa. One short and fat, with a softness about him, a halo of fluffy white curls, and a gleam of delight in his eyes as he sipped his drink. One long and angular, red-haired, dark glasses hiding his eyes and fond adoration curving his mouth as he watched the soft one. Neither of them had looked at all dangerous, or even mischievous. "Which is which?"

"Ah, well." Al dropped his gaze, draping a towel over his shoulder to burp Jonathan. "That's the question, isn't it. I bet Granathema knows, but she's not telling, and well, it's kind of rude to go up to them and just ask, you know. Besides, half the fun is in the speculation. I will say this. Crowley loves the kids - and they love him back - he may well offer to sit with Jonathan at some point. And, well, it's your choice in the end, but I wouldn't want to upset either Trickster _or_ Guardian."


	3. Into Sleep

Late that night, Beth was about ready to cry with exhaustion, but if she stopped rocking the cradle, the baby would wake again, and howl his little head off, and it had been hard enough settling him this far.

Soft footsteps crossed the floor, and she looked up to see Crowley leaning against the doorpost, wrapped for warmth in something long, heavily quilted, and dark red. Brighter red hair tumbled haphazardly across his shoulders and dark glasses hid his eyes despite the hour.

"Hey," he said, voice hushed not to wake the sleepy baby. "Husband not around?"

"He did last night," she replied, just as softly.

He nodded, understanding, but didn't come any closer. "You look about out on your feet. I can rock the little one for you. If you're willing."

She blinked, trying to process what that meant. "I don't-"

His face set a little harder, as if tightening around an old, old hurt.

Al's words curled up out of the clouds of weariness filling her brain. _Crowley loves the kids - and they love him back. Trickster. Guardian. Your choice in the end._ She tried again, fumbling through the clouds for the right words. "I mean... As a Guardian?"

"If that's what you want me to be." The tight look eased. "I was a Nanny before I retired, I can rock a cradle well enough. But not without your permission. I won't make your choices for you, whatever they are."

That seemed terribly important, and yet terribly far away from these small hours of the night. She nodded, only half sure what she was agreeing to, but that seemed to be enough. He peeled his long, supple, body off the doorframe and came closer.

"Get some sleep," he said, a wry but gentle smile curving his mouth. "Go on. Baby's safe with me." He rested one hand on the cradle, taking up the rhythm without a break and she gratefully gave into temptation and fell into bed. She was out almost the moment her head hit the pillow, but a whisper of sound followed her down into sleep. _Wake rested, having dreamed of whatever you like best..._

She dreamed of being held close, shielded against all the storms of the world.


	4. Rocking the Cradle

Crowley looked up as Aziraphale reached the doorway, less from hearing the near-silent footsteps across the rugs and boards than from feeling his approach. He'd always been able to sense where his angel was - at least apart from the time he got discorporated, and wasn't exactly there to be found. He turned his mind firmly away from that moment, and focused on the rhythm of the cradle rocking under his hand instead.

He'd all but expected the angel to turn up. Neither of them much enjoyed being apart for long these days, though they'd give each other whatever space the other needed. For something as simple as this though? Company was company, even silent through a wakeful night.

Aziraphale stopped in the doorway and glanced towards the bedroom that held the sleeping woman.

Crowley raised his eyebrows. "Do you think we should tell her? She seems to I'm a - a guardian - or some such." The words slithered out of his mouth as if it was the most ridiculous idea ever dreamed up, but there was a slight ache to his tone, as he remembered other children than this one.

Aziraphale came closer and stooped over the cradle. "Aren't you?" His hand hovered a fraction over the baby's head as he laid the usual blessing for this family on him. Strength to walk your own path, courage to face whatever came, and the ability to find joy in the little things of life.

"Don't be ridiculous, angel!" Crowley hissed just above a whisper. "I'm a-"

Aziraphale hummed softly. "You've been incurable soft for children, dear, since before the ark. Even when you had to spin reasons for it out of whole cloth."

Crowley only spluttered at that, and then sagged, subsiding into the chair even as he kept the cradle rocking gently. "Well, you know, never been up for killing kids, at least."

Aziraphale miracled up another chair and sat opposite him with a soft smile. "No, dearheart, of course not," he said, mischief gleaming in his eyes as he teased his beloved just a little. "Though I have to wonder what that makes me."

Crowley huffed silently, rolled his eyes, and muttered with fond exasperation, "Angel!"

"Besides that, dearest."

"If anyone's a guardian, angel, it's you. Right there in your title, isn't it, O Guardian of the Eastern Gate?"

"I do suppose it is, but that's such a formality, wouldn't you say?" Aziraphale miracled a book into his hands, and opened it at his bookmark, a tiny smirk of amusement hovering on his mouth.

Crowley slouched a bit deeper into the chair (which obligingly made itself deep enough to still hold him) and mumbled something inaudibly.

"I'm sorry, dearheart, I didn't catch that." Aziraphale looked up from his book and fluttered his eyelashes very obviously. "Could you repeat it?"

Crowley looked at the angel being relaxed enough for mischief and his mouth lifted in incurable fondness for what they had built in retirement. He would never have done that before Adam. He shook his head and said tenderly, "Bastard."

Aziraphale wiggled in his seat. "But I'm your bastard worth knowing," he said happily.

They looked at each other for a long moment, and then settled in for a few hours, one reading, one rocking, each basking gently and contentedly in the presence of the other.


	5. In the Garden

Crowley had taken the older children out into the garden to show them the stars. Beth had handed Jonathan's care off to Al for a while, and now sat curled up in an armchair, nursing a mug of tea, and warily watching Aziraphale read in one of the other high-backed chairs, because if Crowley was the Guardian, didn't that make Aziraphale the Trickster? He certainly looked sweet and soft and gentle and trustable, but was that real, or part of a trickster's deception?

Aziraphale must have sensed her gaze, because he closed his book and looked over at her. "Is something the matter, dear?"

She blinked and looked down at her cooling tea. "No, not really. Just thinking, sorry."

"Oh? Anything worth the penny for them?"

She gulped tea to buy her time. "I was wondering..."

He just sat there, looking sweetly interested.

"...about how you and your husband met. Being opposites and all." That should be safe, shouldn't it?

He looked back at her, his sweet gaze somehow turned into something impossibly intense. "How much about us - Crowley and me - do you already know?"

"Er..." She looked down at the remains of her now-cold tea, and wrapped her hands tighter around the mug, thinking frantically. She did _not_ want to insult this man - this pair - even accidentally.

He followed her gaze and the mug of tea was suddenly warm against her palms again. "I take it that's 'not much'."

A chill crawled up her spine, and she nodded apologetically. "I'm sorry, I didn't mean to insult or anything, I-"

"You're scaring her, angel," Crowley drawled from the doorway. Behind him, the kids flooded down the hall towards the kitchen and hot drinks. He sauntered forward, and folded his arms on the back of Aziraphale's chair, leaning forward enough to stare at her over the other man's shoulder. "He doesn't mean to, he just forgets how things come across. There are reasons his lot are always having to tell folk not to be afraid."

"I'm not insulted, my dear. I just want to know where we're starting from." He tipped his head back to look up at Crowley, and she half expected them to kiss, but they didn't. "She asked how we met, you see, dearheart, and you're always telling me not to launch into that one without explanation."

"Oh, yeah, that one. Long story. Throws people in at the deep end."

"I'm not a child!" The words burst from her before she could stop them. "You don't have to coddle me!"

Crowley raised his eyebrows above his dark glasses. "Ok, fine. We met in the Garden."

Aziraphale chuckled and added, "Where he was a wily old serpent, and I was technically on apple tree duty."

"And _technically_ , I wasn't supposed to be there at all, but I snuck in anyway, and got chatting to this woman I met on the path. And after everything about that went down like a lead balloon, I got chatting to this here angel instead." His gloved hand dropped to rest on Aziraphale's shoulder for just a moment. "And we've been doing it on and off ever since."

"It did spawn a whole lot of legends about tricking knowledge from gods and giving it to humans, be fair, dearheart. It didn't end up entirely a lead balloon."

"I didn't do the part about taking fire from the gods - well, God - and giving it to mankind though." Crowley grinned at Beth, a flare of humour as sharp as his teeth. "That was all Aziraphale. All _I_ gave humanity was knowledge."

Aziraphale sniffed primly. "And free will, dear, don't forget that."

"Don't be silly, angel, they had that already, or they couldn't have chosen to eat the apple."

Beth looked from one to the other as they batted the tale between them. She was sure she was missing something here, some context or other that would make it all make sense, but she had said she could cope and she didn't want to go back on that. Not now when they were spilling information freely. Sort of freely, anyway. Even if she couldn't quite catch the meaning of it all. Apples and petnames, and Prometheus in there somewhere, and trickster legends about knowledge, and a garden, and a fire...

Crowley told her with a shrug, "We're still in the knowledge business all these years later. He gathers it into one place, and I give it out to people who need it. We run an information centre in London. Used to be a bookshop, until I finally persuaded him to go digital on at least some of it." He straightened, and one corner of his mouth twitched upward. "Ah, but I've lost you somewhere, haven't I. Too much, too fast." He looked over his shoulder. "Ngk. 'K. Kitchen's cleared out, I'm grabbing a drink. S'cold out there." He was off almost before he finished talking, and the door swung shut in his wake.

Beth winced. "Was it something I said?"

Aziraphale shook his white head. "Old memories. Can't be helped, dear. And he was probably just waiting for the crowd to clear out of the kitchen anyway. Which reminds me, if you don't know already, he doesn't like to be touched, so always ask first."

Right. That explained the not-kiss. "Got it."

"Any other questions?"

Too many to count flitted through Beth's mind, but she shook her head, not wanting to push her luck. "I need to process all of this first."

"Well, dear girl, if you change your mind, you know where to find us."

She nodded and got out of there.


	6. At the Kitchen Table

"Ah," Al's grandfather, Newton, said as Beth brought her mug back to the kitchen. "You must have been talking to Aziraphale and Crowley. You have that look about you." He was as white-haired as Granathema, slightly stooped, but still spry, and he ran the old-fashioned kitchen as deftly as she ran the family.

Beth washed out her mug and set it to drain. "There's a look for that?"

"Slightly stunned around the edges," he said, with one of his gentle smiles. He whisked a tray of freshly-baked biscuits (star-shaped, cinnamon-flavoured) out of the Aga and onto a cooling rack, then slid one over to Beth. "Here, try this for me."

She took it gratefully, and sagged onto a stool. "I only asked how they met," she mumbled around a mouthful of sugar and spice.

Newton chuckled, a sympathetic look in his dark eyes. "Oh, dear. That was one of the first ones I ran into as well." He made air-quotes with his fingers. "In the Begining, in the Garden, he was a wily old serpent and I was technically on apple-tree duty."

"Yeah," Beth said. "Almost exactly."

"Two things to keep in mind around them - first, if they say something weird, it's probably best to assume they're being literal. Neither of them are much good at inventing things, though Crowley in particular is good at adapting other people's inventions. Second, if they say something needs context, believe them and take all the context you can get. It probably won't be enough. There's a limit to how many centuries of context anyone can cram into an explanation, but it'll help. Although sometimes I think they're being confusing on purpose, trying to sound human - they're not very good at hiding what they are." He shrugged, and retrieved a handful of carrots to peel and chop manually. "Oh, and a third thing - odd things _will_ happen when they're around. I've always been good at just rolling with whatever happens. That helps too, for those of us that marry into this family." He smiled again, still gentle, still welcoming.

"So when Aziraphale says 'wily old serpent' he means...?"

"Crowley's other form is a large black snake, yes. He is the Serpent, after all." He swept peelings into the compost bin. "And when Crowley says 'angel' it's a very literal petname."

"Wait. You know what they are?"

Newton blinked, creases all over his face like a love-note folded and refolded to read over and over again. "Of course. Didn't young Allium fill you in before you came?"

"He said... he said they were the family Trickster and Guardian, and odd even by family standards. And," Beth lowered her voice, "that they don't age."

For a long moment, there was no sound except for the chunk-chunk-chunk of carrots being sliced. "Well," Newton said at last, "he isn't exactly wrong. Just, hm, incomplete." He tossed the sliced carrot into a pan and started on another. "He must take after Anathema." A tender warmth curved his mouth, and Beth felt as if she was finally being let into this family. "I love her dearly, but she _was_ raised to keep secrets and act on things no one else knew."

"I thought I knew what I was getting into," she mumbled.

He set the knife down beside the carrots, pulled up another stool, and sat down beside her. "When I was a kid, I wanted to work with computers. Except because of what I am, everything computerised that I touch goes _phut_. There was a reason for that, and it - came in useful - a few times, but it took a long while to get over that dream and find another one. It's the same with those two. What they are and were doesn't change who they are - the kind of people they are - though. You know that, right?"

Beth swallowed and managed a jerky nod. "I just- I want to know so I don't blunder into something I shouldn't. I do that way too often as it is."

Newton nodded, and resumed chopping. "Very well," he said, and took a long breath, clearly thinking back on something. "They retired from active duty shortly after Anathema and I met them for the first time."

"You make it sound like they were in a war."

He looked at her, gentle and amused. "They were, with all the old scars and traumas you might expect from that. A bit of a bigger war than you're probably thinking though." He took a long breath and fixed his eyes on the vegetables. "They were on opposite sides of the war between Heaven and Hell, with the world as stakes and battleground. An angel and a demon, to be precise. They met, as I understand it, in the Garden. In the original Eden. Where Crowley was the Serpent tempting Eve, and Aziraphale was guarding the Tree of Knowledge..."

Beth felt the colour draining from her face, and all she could think was, _I let the Serpent of Eden baby-sit my son!_


	7. Up the Back Stairs

"Ooh, do I smell biscuits?" A dark blond man who looked in his early thirties slid through the kitchen door, hand extended to steal one.

Newton rapped the extended hand lightly. "You're not twelve any more, Adam, you can wait."

"Aw, but they're nicer warm."

"Adam." There was a certain snap to the name, that reminded Beth that nice though the old man was, he was also ruler of his kitchen. "Company manners."

Adam looked round, saw Beth and grinned at her. "Oh, hello. Didn't see you there. How you doing?"

Beth shrugged, past putting it into words.

He shrugged back. Then grinned again. "It'll be ok," he said, an odd sincerity in his voice. "I know we take some getting used to, but you'll get there."

Newton gave the younger man a look.

Adam held up his hands in surrender. "I'm not doing anything, truly. Just - looking." He stared blatantly at the biscuits to prove it.

Newton rolled his eyes. "You know very well I'm immune to your charms, go pester someone else."

"I'm not that bad!" He grinned at Beth again. "You're Allium's other half, right? I'm Adam, as you probably guessed. I'm a cousin, kind of. It's complicated, but 'cousin' covers it nicely."

"Yeah," she said. "That's me." For some reason, she was feeling steadier, getting used to the weirdness, as he'd mentioned. "Anyway, I should get back to the baby. I've taken up enough of your time."

"Want me to walk you back," Adam offered, "so you don't run into anyone you're not up to dealing with right now?"

"You can arrange that?"

"Uh huh." He shoved both hands in his pockets. "If you want. Not going to push, you got enough to deal with from everyone else."

Beth thought about it for a moment, but he seemed pleasant enough, harmless enough, human enough. She pushed herself to her feet. "Ok, fine."

"Great." He led her through side corridors and up a back staircase, and true to his word, they didn't meet anyone on the way. He chattered easily about inconsequential things - childhood games, and cooking recipes, and dogs (he had one, a black and white terrier type) - and kept his hands to himself.

Beth relaxed into it, relieved to have a touch of normality for once. "Am I allowed to ask about the complicated cousin bit? I'm still getting who's related to who straight."

He paused, one hand on the bannister, considering. "Starting off, I was adopted as a baby. Not by this family, by a different one. I found out in a pretty rough way when I was eleven and my bio-dad tried to claim me out of the blue. I had a bit of a - phase - at the time. But hey, we all survived it, so no harm done in the end." Blue eyes gleamed as he glanced at her face. "Then when I was older, I took up with the - unofficially adopted - kid of one of the uncles-by-proxy of this family. You know. The kind of old family friend who gets referred to as an uncle for lack of a better word, if you see what I mean?"

Beth nodded. She certainly saw why he preferred to condense it all down to "cousin."

"Just occasionally, my kinda-bio-cousin drops by. Not often - he can't get away from his own folk for long - but he's about the only member of that side of the family that I get along with, even if everyone considers us complete opposites." Adam leapt up the last few steps and waved a hand at a door Beth recognised as her own. "And there you are." He let her past, and then bounded off again, calling cheerily over his shoulder, "Mind how you go."


	8. What's Normal, Anyway?

When next Beth ventured down to the main room, she found them clustered together, working on a crossword. Aziraphale, Adam, and another man Adam's age were squashed into a two-seater sofa, while Crowley perched on the arm, leaning in so he could see, his leg a scant inch from Adam's arm.

"Yearning, ever green," Aziraphale read out, "four letters."

"Pine, angel," Crowley supplied, glancing up only briefly as Beth slipped into one of the further chairs.

"Oh, of course, dearheart."

Beth settled Jonathan against her shoulder and let the voices wash over her as voices, nothing more than that.

A shadow falling across her startled her out of her half-doze. She blinked and blinked again, and the man rolled his eyes and sprawled into one of the other chairs, legs stuck out in front of him.

He said, "You're Beth, right? Al's partner?"

She nodded, realising the rest of the quartet had gone off somewhere.

"I'm Warlock, Adam's other half." He shoved straight, mousy-brown, hair out of his eyes with a flick of his wrist. "Just so as you know. He always forgets us humans need to be introduced to each other."

"Us Humans?" Beth echoed, her hands tightening their hold on Jonathan, who whimpered in protest.

"Yeah, ok, apart from the age thing." He scrunched his face up, briefly, as if he tasted something foul. "When we realised that I was aging and he wasn't, Adam tweaked things. Apparently I'm going to live just as long as he is, and look the same age as he does." He flicked her a sharp, thin, smile. "Such are the perils of being his primary anchor."

"Anchor?"

He grimaced and shoved his hands in his pockets. "Power of Lurve keeps him human. Or as human as Adam gets. Like, I know he'd tell all the powers of heaven and hell, 'Eff off my lawn and go play someplace else, no you can't have your ball back.' for the sake of staying with someone who loved him. Did that for his dad once, he tells me, and I saw how he fell apart when he lost him. I believe it. Now he's got me instead. For whatever I'm worth."

"Oh." Beth considered pulling a face of her own. "Is anyone in this family what they seem?"

"Al. Allium. And you," Warlock quipped back. "Honestly though. It's a family founded by a real witch, who was a descendent of another witch who saw the future, and an ex-witchfinder who's a walking anti-tech field. I mean seriously. Don't let Newton touch your phone or anything, he'll bust it. Then you've got an angel and a demon as uncles-by-proxy, a kinda-cousin that's the Antichrist, descendents of people who literally told the Horsepeople of the Apocalypse to 'shove off or I'll shiv you', and a bunch of humans who get brought up thinking all of this is normal. So normal that they forget it has to be explained to incomers." He looked oddly wistful for a moment. "All I ever got to do on that front was be a distraction and fall in love with a cute boy. Oh, and tell a different demon he stunk. Not that that did any good."

Somehow, the wry sarcasm in his voice made the words easier to take in. Beth smiled wryly back, sure that it would hit her later, but for now... For now, it just flooded in and she gave up trying to make it fit into the world she thought that she knew. "All? Sounds plenty to me."

He laughed, and it was all sharp, bitter, edges. "Aziraphale and Crowley practically raised me until I was almost eleven. It was a pretty weird start to life, but at least I knew I had someone who loved me. Then they left and I didn't anymore. Not for years and years." He drew in a breath as sharp as his laugh and shoved himself to his feet. "Hang onto your Al, Beth, and your kid. Sometimes people can love you dearly, and still ditch you for something they think is more important." And with that, he too was gone.


	9. A Tartan Welcome

Al gave the arm of the chair an absent nudge, and it obligingly expanded enough that he could slide in beside Beth. He'd learned growing up that most of the seats here did that. (It was a side-effect of being repeatedly around an angel and a demon. The seats knew what the demon expected of them, and always obliged.) It had been something of an abrupt learning curve when he moved out and the chairs at uni _hadn't_ budged. "Hey, love," he said softly. "How's it going?"

She curled into the curve of his arm, nestling her head against his shoulder. "Wondering what else people have forgotten to tell me. 'Not like anything else' doesn't even begin to cover it, you twit." She stuck a finger on his most ticklish rib and he squirmed, trying not to disturb Jonathan in the process. "You could just have told me."

"Would you have believed me?"

Behind her, Adam and Warlock appeared almost silently in the doorway.

Adam mouthed, "She ok?"

Al gave him the tiniest of nods, and they both grinned, before Warlock dragged Adam away with a definite "Told you so" expression on his face.

She grumbled, "Might have done. I can't exactly sort it out in my head when everyone keeps upending what I knew each time someone new turns up." In her arms, Jonathan shifted and began to cry, each wail louder than the last.

Beth sighed. "Now he needs changing - just as we were getting comfortable."

Somebody snapped their fingers behind her, out of sight, and Jonathan was abruptly clean, dry, changed, and in a tartan onesie.

Al eyed the new outfit, trying and failing to fight a grin. He raised his voice without moving. "Thanks, Aziraphale."

"You're welcome, my dear," came absently and distantly through the open doorway.

Beth resettled the little one, and then lifted her face to Al's. "So. How did you know who did it? Because I don't think you saw anymore than I did."

"It's the tartan," Al replied softly, his fingers curling round to stroke the nape of Beth's neck. "He almost always makes cloth things tartan, and he's the only one who does. Crowley teases him mercilessly about it, but Aziraphale insists that tartan is stylish, and it's his tartan anyway so he gets to decide who gets it. Consider it a welcome to the family, in a way."

There was a chime from outside, and Al froze for a moment, then grimaced. "We'd better move anyway," he said. "Someone's arrived, and if they set off the chime, they aren't human. Be careful, Beth, prepare to be upended, and trust your instincts. Sometimes that's the best we have."


	10. Of Water Pistols and Blow Torches

Two baskets had appeared by the door, one holding blow torches, one holding water pistols. Al scooped up a bright green water pistol and drew Beth to the back of the family crowd. "Precaution only," he murmured.

"Should I take one?" she murmured back.

"Not this time, you're not trained."

Adam and Warlock were at the front of the crowd on one side, Aziraphale and Crowley on the other. Behind them, older family members alternated fire and water.

The new arrival was a very human-looking man in his early thirties, black-haired, brown-skinned, with a short beard and dark eyes. He wore faded jeans, a dark blue fisherman's jersey, and trainers. "Permission to come in?"

Granathema stepped up between Warlock and Aziraphale and looked him over, "Oh, it's you," she said in wry recognition. "Permission granted."

He thanked her with a smile and a nod and came cheerfully up the path, pausing for a moment beside Aziraphale and Crowley. "Mum says to say hi. She sends her love. To  _both_ of you."

Crowley rolled his face skywards with sarcastic sounding mutter of, "Gee, thanks."

Aziraphale all but glowed beside him. "She's not coming too, is she?" he asked, suddenly more cautious.

"No, no, she's keeping the rest of them occupied for a bit. Then I have to get back." He turned away from the angel and the demon to trade grins with Adam. "Put the pitchfork away, cousin, this is a social visit."

Most of the family children, released as the word was passed back, came running through the crowd to hug the man, or grab his hands and tug him up the path. They swirled respectfully around Granathema, leaving her free to return inside on Warlock's arm.

Newton slid his blow-torch into an oversized hip pouch and greeted the man with a nod. "You're just in time for dinner," he said, "but you'd know that, wouldn't you? How long?"

"Just the evening, sadly. I have to be back in time for the formalities tomorrow." His eyes lit up as the children bounced around him, and then paused on Jonathan in Beth's arms. "And who's this little one?"

Al said, the words tumbling over each other in haste, "This is my wife, Beth, and my son Jonathan. Beth, this is-"

"Yeshua Josephson," the man filled in with a grin. "Part-time carpenter."

Beth resorted to instinctive courtesies, and replied, "Nice to meet you." Jonathan squirmed in her arms, reaching out to the man, who reached up a broad, calloused, but gentle, hand to help steady him.

Jonathan grabbed a fistful of his beard, and Yeshua laughed. "Children, the same the world over." He eased free. "Don't worry about it, truly," he said, and she felt a sense of peace wash over her. Then he was gone, up into the house with the children.

Beth watched him go, and then turned to Al with raised eyebrows. "So. Do I sense another explanation coming?"

"He's Adam's cousin. Sort of. Generations get a bit wonky with immortals, but he prefers 'cousin' to 'uncle' so that's what we use."

"Not human, you said."

"No, he's a couple thousand years old, roughly. He's... kind of famous under his translated name."

Beth turned to head in. "Which is?" she prodded cautiously.

Al sighed and tossed the water pistol back in the basket. He glanced round, then draped an arm across Beth's back. "Most people in this part of the world would call him Jesus," he said, his voice only just above a whisper. "The original one."


	11. Where One is Fed

Crowley sat on one side of the long table, flanked by Adam and Warlock, who seemed to be experts in moving around him without any accidental touches happening. Opposite him sat Aziraphale, flanked by Yeshua and Newton. Beth and Al were side by side a little further down, with Jonathan finally asleep in his cot. Her mind seemed to have run out of supplies to be shocked, and settled on numb acceptance for now, she noted distantly, unsure if the distance itself was a sign of shock, or if she was just drowning too deep in strangeness to focus on anything.

Crowley slid the basket of rolls towards Yeshua. "If I offer you bread, will you take it this time?*" he asked, a light, teasing, note in his voice.

"Why, yes," Yeshua replied. He picked one up, broke it in half and offered a piece back to Crowley. "If I offer you bread," he echoed gently, "will you take it?**"

Crowley hesitated, fingers white against the wooden table.

"It's safe," Yeshua assured him. His dark eyes went soft with affection and knowledge. "No blessings. Just the bread." It lay on his palm, looking innocuous.

Crowley lifted his head to meet dark eyes with dark glasses. "If you're quite sure," he said, and took the bread very tentatively, as if he expected it to burn him. He looked surprised when it didn't.

"In memory," Yeshua said, "of a wonderful world tour."

"Oh," Crowley said. "That. Yeah, fine." Some of the tension went out of his body and he lounged back in his chair. "That bit about walking on England's mountains green wasn't my doing, by the way."

Aziraphale turned slightly pink, helped himself to a roll, and passed the basket on down the table without saying a word.

"Sounds better than 'did those feet have to move hastily to avoid treading in the pony droppings that kept the not-entirely-pleasant pastures green'," Yeshua quipped. "even if the latter has the benefit of being truer. No mountains in sight though."

"Oi, I was going to put us at a safe distance, but you wanted to pet the ponies, so..."

Adam and Warlock rolled their eyes at each other over Crowley and Yeshua's playful banter, and kept passing dishes. Aziraphale took eager spoonfuls of everything, Crowley took almost nothing, just a bowl of soup. Everyone else reacted normally to the food, as far as Beth could tell.

Like them, she helped herself from the dishes that reached her - soup, bread, butter, honey, and fruit, casserole and potatoes, carrots and peas - and passed them on.

Newton relaxed once Aziraphale began to eat with little sounds of approval and much lip dabbing with a napkin, while Crowley cradled a cup of coffee in long fingers (having downed the soup in one long swallow and the bread in a second) and gazed steadfastly at his eating husband.

Al muttered in her ear, "Crowley's always going to watch Aziraphale wherever they're sat. At least when they're on opposite sides, he's not all twisted round to do it."

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> * Temptation in the desert (Say the word and these rocks will become bread)
> 
> ** Last Supper (Eat this bread in remembrance of me)


	12. Phut Down

There were hardly enough comfy chairs in the main room to go round, Beth realised. Yeshua solved part of that by dropping into a seated position on the floor and leaning his back against the chair Adam and Warlock were sharing. Several of the children followed his example as he picked up the thread of a conversation started over dinner, about Christian fanatics insisting on his second coming. "Well, I mean," he said, "they get so adamant that I'm going to show up that it would be rude not to." He paused to make interested noises over the picture one of the younger children had drawn, and then looked up with an almost mischievous grin. "It isn't my fault if they're too busy looking for someone blond and blue-eyed to appear in a blaze of glory to notice the man serving their coffee and clearing away their plates. I'm pretty sure the book says I'm there to serve, not to be served." He glanced at Aziraphale for confirmation.

The angel smiled back. "Something like that, dear, though I forget the exact wording."

"Oh," Adam said, grinning back. "Is that why you were serving ice-cream in Tadfield the summer we first met?"

"Something of the sort," Yeshua agreed. "Only, unlike the fanatics, you actually got chatting to me. You do that to most people, I notice."

Adam shrugged, cheeks going red. "People are people, whatever they're doing. I like learning how they work."

"Anyway, when a whole lot of them start shouting your name in near unison and meaning it, it's quite easy to notice for some reason."

"Heh, can imagine," Adam said. "Although if you ever want me to play decoy..." His blue eyes gleamed with matching mischief, beneath the loose curls of dark blond hair.

Yeshua threw back his head and laughed. "Oh Mother, just imagine their  _faces_ ." A shimmering echo of amusement filled the house for just a breath and across the room, Crowley winced.

"Cool it," Warlock said, a wry smile on his own face. "You're channeling a bit too much holiness."

"Sorry."

"I swear one of these days you two are going to do something that will..." He trailed off with a patent eyeroll and hands tossed upwards.

Adam and Yeshua exchanged looks, and then grins.

Adam said with obvious false innocence, "Who, us?"

"Yeah," Warlock countered, "you," and launched himself into a tickle attack on Adam's ribs.

Yeshua ducked a flying elbow and scooted sideways to get out of the danger zone, ending up by Newton. "You're the reason Michael tries to confiscate my phone when she knows I'm heading down here, right?"

"Uh, maybe?" Newton bit his lip. "Whatever I did, it wasn't deliberate, I only do it to less than nice folks on purpose."

"Oh?" Yeshua gave him an avid, interested, look, the sort that draws stories out of people before they realise.

Newton relaxed, leaning back in his chair beside Granathema. "It was an accident the first time - well second, if you count preventing the Apocalypse, but that's not something you do every day. Warlock was staying with us, and the paparazzi were harassing him."

"My dad was a fairly big thing in politics at the time," Warlock clarified, pausing his attack, "and they thought they could get at him through me." Adam retaliated by turning the tables on Warlock and tickling back.

Newton nodded. "Well, I came out to pick up the daily stack of newspapers, and they all oriented on me like sharks smelling blood. Next thing any of us realised was that all their digital cameras and microphones had gone _phut_." A wry humour curled into his gentle smile. "Very put out, they were. Anyway, after that, I'd sometimes get a call to join protests when the people involved knew the bigots were planning to fake problems and stir up outrage to post online. I used to photobomb their filming, or their posed picture stunts, and - you know - it _phut_ them up for a while."

Off to one side, Crowley made a mock-groan at the pun, but he was grinning too. "More pointed than my idea of just shutting down the phone network."

"And less likely to backfire on you, dear," Azirahale added.

"That too," Crowley admitted. "That too."

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> If you want to read the background on Michael, Newton, and phones, you can find it here: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21836593/chapters/52113364


	13. Not Exactly a Silent Night

A knock at the door heralded carol singers. Mostly local children, Beth found, when she joined the drift into hearing range with perhaps half the family. Yeshua came too, somewhere in the middle, far enough back to lean against the wall, close enough to the front to be visible to the singers.

He seemed fine with it, until they started in on the Holly and the Ivy. The expression on his face didn't change an inch, but he absently began rubbing his wrist with his other hand.

It rather reminded Beth of the way her old Granny had rubbed her arthritic wrist when it had hurt. Before she thought, she asked very softly, "Are you ok?"

He replied only with the tiniest of nods, so slight she almost missed it, and didn't take his eyes of the singers. When they moved onto Good King Wenceslas, he stopped rubbing his wrist too, and shoved his hands into his pockets instead.

When the singing stopped and Newton came out with a basket of biscuits for the children - the cinnamon stars Beth had seen him making - Yeshua straightened a bit and fell in beside her. "While I'm here," he said as softly as she had, "I'm just another of the cousins. It's nice not being the centre of attention for a change."

"Ok." Beth made a mental note of that.

"Carols aren't even that bad," he added with a grin. "It's only like having one of those relatives who will insist on telling everyone what a cute baby you were."

His grin was infectious, and Beth found herself smiling back. "Your wrist doesn't hurt then? My gran's used to, and she'd rub it just like that, so I-" She gulped and trailed off, suddenly remembering who she was talking to. Who she was fussing over like one of the older mothers fussed over everyone. Was that what she had to look forward to, now Jonathan was born?

"Oh!" He sounded honestly surprised, and his grin warmed into a true beaming smile. "No, no, my wrists healed up long ago. I just have the habit of rubbing them when I'm reminded of how I got them." He glanced round, then pushed his sleeves up a little to reveal matching puckered scars in the hollows of his wrists. "They don't hurt, I promise," he said, eyes gentle on her face as he tugged his sleeves back down over them. He seemed to be expecting another question, but Beth wasn't about to remind him again by asking, not if the carol already had.

"Ok," she said again, to fill the lull in the conversation. "I'll take your word for it."

"Thanks. Look, if you do have questions later, you should ask Crowley, he's always been one for providing knowledge to people."

"Always?"

He smiled gently. "He wants people to be able to choose freely, and you can't make those choices unless you know what all the options are. So, yes, he provides the knowledge needed. Hasn't always made him popular, of course, but it's there."

Beth raised an eyebrow and cocked her head to where she could faintly hear Crowley ranting about all the ways carols got the night wrong.

"How silently, the gift was given?" he was saying, and she could just imagine the flailing hands that accompanied that. "Oh, _Earth_ , no. Between Mary screaming with birth pains, Joseph shouting for help and a midwife, the baby crying as babies do, ten million angels singing at the tops of their voices..."

Yeshua cocked his head the same way, and chuckled self-deprecatingly. "Silent, Wah-wah-wah, Night, Holy, oi-angels-did-you-bring-extra-nappies-this-one's-leaking, Night. I know, I know. But he is the best one to give you answers. He was there for a lot of it, after all, and rather older than I was."

"Ok," Beth said for the third time. "I'll try and remember that. Got questions, ask Crowley. Understood."


	14. Listen To Me

Later, when most of the children had been put to bed, and the immortals were idly reminiscing on old times with each other, Yeshua's phone chimed, and he muttered something in a tongue Beth didn't know.

"Language, young man!" Aziraphale huffed in English.

Crowley just cackled. "Who taught you that one?"

Yeshua smiled with almost shy reminiscence. "Peter," he said. "When he first got taken on full time with the fishing, he went through a stage when he was determined to talk like the sailor he now was, and of course the rest of us - James, John, Andrew, me - all learned the words too. Don't tell the church." He pulled the phone out, sighed, and climbed to his feet. "Mum says it's time for me to come home. Thanks for having me, and for the meal." He moved easily through the room, saying his goodbyes.

Adam stood too. "I'll walk you down the lane," he offered.

"Thanks."

They went out together, and it was as if their leaving took Beth's internal numbness with them. Her head felt stuffed entirely too full, and as if something was hammering on it from the inside out. All her senses kept drifting, on and off and in and out of focus. Too much of everything or no input at all, all shifting and changing at random, and nothing at all making any sense of any kind. She curled in on herself, trying to block out the weirdness, trying to find some kind of toehold into sense. She was only vaguely aware that some of the sound was voices talking to her. Then talking around her.

"What she really needs, angel, is proper sleep. It's a lot to take in, all at once, and human brains do most of their processing, filing, and sorting at night."

"And you think you can...?"

"If she's willing, angel. Only then. Take her up to her bed anyway."

There was movement on top of everything else and Beth heard a whimper escape her throat.

A hiss overlaid everything else, like white noise cancelling out unwanted sound. It steadied her somehow, slowed the whirl of sensation. She closed her eyes, and let her head rest against a broad, soft, shoulder. Falling, shifting, moving again. Pillows. Bed.

"Beth. Can you look at me?"

The words were oddly compelling, and she felt her eyelids flutter open again, but her eyes wouldn't focus. A gloved hand cupped her cheek to turn her head and the hiss returned, pulling golden eyes more into focus.

"Lisssten to me. I can help you ssleeep. Easse you through thiss, if thatsss ok?"

Right now, Beth would take anything from anyone if it helped. She felt her mouth moving, pleading, wasn't sure if or what words came out of it. Everything was disconnected, or mis-connected, tangled up and lost in her over-stuffed head.

It must have been some kind of acceptance though, because the golden eyes captured her gaze and held it without her having to try. She couldn't have looked away even if she wanted to, but she didn't want to, she was only too grateful for the anchor they provided her. A wordless hissing croon coiled around her, smoothing a balm onto all the raw edges of her mind, and she almost wept with relief. Her body was a distant, heavy, thing, going slack in the bed. The hammering pulse slowed along with her breathing. The thoughts in her head went soft, like loose feathers drifting apart, and the croon took their place. Only the croon and the eyes mattered any more as she floated, mesmerised, into golden tunnels that grew larger and larger, pulling her deeper and deeper. No fear left, no fight left. She surrendered herself utterly to the crooner's will and an ocean of sleep dragged her under with all the strength of a riptide. She knew nothing more until morning.


	15. Question Time (1)

Beth woke with a clearer head, to a cranky baby who wouldn't settle no matter what she tried. She took him from an exhausted Al anyway, because that was part of their trade-off. If they did alternate nights, then at least they'd each get some sleep during the week. Besides, the familiarity of soothing Jonathan soothed her in turn.

She padded downstairs so Al could catch a nap, and found Crowley standing at the foot of the stairs.

He took one look at them and rolled his head in lieu of rolling hidden eyes. "You've got questions," he said, before she even needed to open her mouth, with amused resignation. "And what your little one's trying to tell you is he wants to be outside. There's a bench in the garden. Coffee? Tea?"

Beth blinked. "Tea?" she ventured.

Warlock stepped out of the shadows and flipped a finger at Crowley. "I'll bring it out. Your turn to answer her questions."

The problem was, she thought, picking her way along the hall to the door, and shrugging into her coat, she didn't have the right words to frame the questions she most wanted to ask.

She started, instead, "How did you know what he wants?" Because stepping out into the winter-quiet garden had indeed made Jonathan go from cranky whining to quieter cooing, fingers stretched out into the cold breeze.

Crowley shrugged and slouched down onto the other end of the bench. "I speak baby. He told me. No big deal."

"Oh." She considered that for a moment. "And yesterday... should I..."

" _Don't_ thank me." He tipped his head back and stared up at the thin clouds wisping across the pale blue sky. "It's a snake thing. Mesmerise with the gaze. Better today?"

"Yes, thanks." She winced, cutting off the engrained courtesy too late. "Sorry." Now she was listening for it, she could hear the faintest hint of that lifesaving white-noise hiss underlying his words.

He grimaced, but any further protest was cut off by Warlock emerging with the promised hot drinks. Crowley accepted a mug of coffee with a muttered, "Lifesaver."

Beth shifted Jonathan's weight in order to free up a hand for her own mug.

Warlock offered a thin, sharp smile. "Want to trade? Granted, I've not held as many kids as he has," he said, jerking his head at Crowley, "but I'm not completely ignorant."

Beth wondered just how many children Crowley had helped and lost over the however many years he'd been - around, but she let Warlock take Jonathan in compentant enough hands and pace the garden with him, staying in her view the whole time. "Why do you get invoved with us anyway," she mumbled into her tea. "How do you bear it knowing you're going to outlive people you care about?"

"Don't look at me," Warlock grouched back. "The only people I ever cared that much for all turned out to be immortal."

Crowley took a long swallow of coffee,and then looked at her. His mouth quirked up a little at the corners. "Humans form close bonds with creatures they know they're going to outlive all the time. Why do you expect us to be any different?"

"I don't get it."

He sighed and coiled long legs under him. "Pets. Companion animals. Working animals. Humans love their pets, and enjoy their company, and outlive them all the time. Nobody gets a dog expecting it to be around for the rest of their life."

"Except Adam," Warlock pointed out rather tartly.

"He's a special case," Crowley snapped back, but it sounded like family banter rather than anger. "Still. It's the same with the horses you ride, or the dogs you herd with, or creatures you hunt with. It's still a close bond. And while we don't exactly think of you as animals...the difference in lifespan is somewhat comparable. As is the enjoyment of your company. It isn't the same bond as with someone who is going to be there your whole life, but we make the most of it while we can. At least here."

"What's different about here?"

"You know what we are," Crowley pointed out, his voice almost gentle. "Most humans don't, and that cuts things a lot shorter and shallower. Have to watch your words, curb the instinct to..." he mimed snapping his fingers for a miracle, "or hide the ones you do, and move on before they realise that they are getting older, and we're not. We've had a lot of practice at it, but that doesn't make it easier."

Beth drank more tea while that sank in. Her heart ached for the secrecy they clearly had to live with. "How much practice? I mean..."

He glanced round, clearly checking for listeners, then shrugged. "A little over 6,000 years."

Beth took her heart in her hands. "And here you are," she dared tease back, "not looking a day over 50.... centuries."

Crowley's mouth dropped open. He stared at her, and she felt her heart sinking further with every silent second that passed.

Then, like an equally silent fountain, mirth welled up in place of tears and he threw back his head and laughed. "You," he managed between cackles, "are going to fit in just _fine_!"


	16. Question Time (2)

Beth managed a shaky smile of acknowledgement and buried her nose in her tea. "So..." she said hesitantly at last, "you just like some people right? But, uh, why us? Why this family? There must be lots of other places you could be."

"Ah," Crowley shifted, stretching out first one leg and then the other. "Well, you see, it goes back to when book-girl and the young witchfinder were a few years younger than you are now."

"He means Anathema and Newton," Warlock clarified with a roll of his eyes.

"Yep, them. Well, it was supposed to be the end of the world, but the Antichrist had gone missing. Bit of a case of too many cooks spoil the baby-swap. Anyway, Anathema ran into us when we were looking for him, and Aziraphale insisted on giving her a lift home."

Beth thanked Warlock with a nod. "The Antichrist was Adam, right."

"Yeah," Crowley said. "That's him. He found himself in the end. Got a few friends to help him cut the Horseriders of the Apocalypse down to size. Then Newton busted a computer, as he does, and Adam had a yelling match with his bio-dad. Adam won, so the Apocalypse got cancelled. Heaven and Hell are still a bit - tetchy - over that. Aziraphale and I retired from our previous places of work, and we ended up keeping in touch with the little group that were there that day. So...here we are."

"Ok... Why did Newton have to bust a computer?"

"Oh, the Riders - you know, War, Famine, Pollution, Death, that lot - were using it to destroy the world in preparation for Heaven and Hell to play 'my gang's better than your gang' in the wreckage." Crowley drained the last of his coffee in a quick gulp. "They didn't include our side - a third side, Earth's side - in their calculations. Didn't realise it even existed until too late. But, like, Adam is humanity incarnate."

Warlock snorted. "So long as he has an anchor, anyhow. When he doesn't, when he gets lost in his power..." He shook his head and shifted Jonathan to his other shoulder. "And that isn't good for anyone."

Crowley waved a hand around in acknowledgement of Warlock's words. The hand farther away from her, Beth realised, reducing the chances of an accidental touch still further. It made her wonder briefly just how many adjustments like that Crowley made to avoid the touch he apparently hated, but that question sank into the sludge beneath all the other half-formed questions almost at once. "Yeah," he said, "but humanity can be awful too sometimes. Anyhow, Adam, and Aziraphale, and me, and Book-girl, and Young Witchfinder, and some actual humans that aren't with us anymore, we came down on Earth's side, and managed to save it. Life goes on, years turn into decades, planet keeps looping around the sun and dancing with the moon, stars shine bright, and all that." He cocked his head on one side. "What else did you want to know?"

"Honestly?" Beth admitted with a sigh. "I don't even know what to ask."


	17. And then there was toast

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> "Aziraphale, what hast thou done with the flaming sword I gave you?"  
> "Uh, I made toast. Would you like some?"

Aziraphale appeared in the doorway in a thick, quilted coat, a teacup cradled in one of his soft, manicured, hands. He looked around, spotted them on the bench, and headed towards them, limping slightly as he crossed the frosty grass.

Beth got to her feet, making space for him on the bench. "Are you ok?" She didn't think he'd been limping earlier.

"I'm fine, thank you, dear." He and Crowley exchanged a long look. "It's an old injury, it stiffens up sometimes when it's cold. Nothing to fret about."

Crowley shifted on the bench, eyeing up the amount of space. "I could go snake, then we'd all three fit safely..." he said hesitantly, one eyebrow quirked at Beth.

She shrugged. "I think I ran out of the ability to be shocked several surprises ago. I don't mind snakes, if that's what you're asking."

Crowley regarded her for a long moment, mouth quirked in some expression she couldn't quite read, then he shimmered, and in his place a small black snake coiled around the rest where his arm had been.

Aziraphale smiled at the snake. "Don't get chilled, dearheart, you know you get cold easier in this form." He seated himself between Beth and the snake, fingers laced across his stomach.

The snake grumbled back, "I'm fine, angel, don't fusss."

"Well," Aziraphale replied, "if you change your mind, I'm wearing the coat, so you're welcome to join me."

Beth looked from one to the other. "Is the coat something I should be familiar with?"

"Well, my dear, it's especially designed to mitigate some of the issues around touch." Aziraphale beamed at Warlock and Jonathan. "Very cleverly designed, they were."

"Have mercy on usss at this hour, angel, and can the fancy words." She wasn't sure whether the snake sighed, or just hissed. "He means it's easier if the coat's between uss."

"The quality of mercy is not strained, my dear..."

"Yeah, yeah," Crowley waved an idle tail. "You can tell he'd never been on a battlefield."

"Crowley! That's an entirely different kind of mercy."

"What is?" Beth asked.

"He's referring," Aziraphale huffed, "to an aspect of battlefield triage*. It's much less common these days, thankfully." He took a breath, and a sip of tea and turned firmly to Beth. "Did he give you a chance to eat breakfast, my dear?"

Beth nearly got whiplash from the abrupt change of conversational direction. "Uh. No? Just tea?"

"Oh, then allow me." Aziraphale flexed his fingers, provoking a joint groan from both Crowley and Warlock.

"No, angel. No magic tricks."

Aziraphale mock-pouted, and then flexed his fingers differently, against his leg. A sword appeared in his hand, and Crowley-the-snake slithered quickly up the back of the bench and draped half of his body over Aziraphale's quilted shoulder, out of the way. A thick slice of bread and cheese appeared in his other hand. He skewered it with the tip of the sword, held it at arms' length, then visibly concentrated. The sword burst into flame with a soft whoosh, darkening the bread and melting the cheese, then subsided back into plain metal.

"Toast, dear?" he said blandly, sliding it off the sword and offering it to her.

Warlock rolled his eyes and grumbled fondly, "Show-off."

Beth eyed it warily and decided it would probably be rude to decline. (It turned out to be very tasty)

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> *To 'give mercy' or 'the mercystroke' after a battle is to give a quick death to those soldiers too badly injured to survive, rather than leaving them to die slowly of bloodloss or infection.


	18. Of Babies and Angels

After she had finished the toast and washed it down with the dregs of her tea, Beth took Jonathan back and said hesitantly, "He - Yeshua - said to, uh, ask Crowley if I found I had questions."

"And do you?" the snake quipped back.

"I thought it was a joke, but... He said something about asking the angels if they'd brought spare nappies. Was it? A joke, I mean?" She stumbles to a halt, because Crowley-the-snake is making little spluttery hisses, and it takes a long moment before she realises that it's laughter. "So it's just a joke, then," she mumbles, unsure whether to be flattered at having - having _him_ \- relax enough around her to make jokes, or hurt that she was only due a joke rather than honesty.

"Nonononono, not a joke," the snake sputters out a moment later. "Happened, I heard. I wasn't there for it though, were you, angel?"

"I only saw the aftermath," Aziraphale says, and he sounds wistful. "I'd have liked to, but perhaps it was better that way. It was hard enough keeping a straight face as it was. I don't think Mary liked Gabriel very much."

"She didn't, she told me as much, years later, when she was telling me about it." Crowley slithered over so he was on the shoulder nearer to Beth. "You know how babies are, you've got one. It happened like this, I gather. Gabriel, who famously told Mary she was having a baby, came swaggering in just after he was born. I'd scarpered by that point, using the excuse of cleaning up, didn't want angels smiting me. Anyhow, he swaggers in with this pristine posh outfit on and pats himself on the back for everything going well. And Mary gives him sweet puppy eyes - not a patch on yours, angel, but you've had more practice, of course - and puts the very human baby, Yeshua, into his arms so he can see the result of his announcement close up."

Aziraphale snickered. "I don't know if she was lucky, or if she managed to time it just right, but Gabriel had apparently just taken the baby and held him close when he filled a very leaky nappy. All over Gabriel."

"More holey than righteous, that nappy."

"Crowley!"

"Whaaaaat?"

"Gabriel was not happy, and he couldn't take it out on Yeshua or Mary, so..."

The hiss turned from amused to furious in the non-blink of a lidless snake's eye. "Took it out on you, did he?"

"I had to clean up the mess, yes. I think I was the only one who could create a new nappy, none of the others had enough Earth-side experience. Especially around babies."

Beth took a breath, rocking her finally sleepy baby, and offered her own joke with her heart in her mouth. "I presume it was a tartan nappy?"

Aziraphale huffed, but didn't look particularly put out. "Tartan is stylish, I'll have you know."

"If you say so," Beth murmured. "Anyway, I should get this little one to bed. I've taken enough of your time, I think." She got to her feet, ducked her head politely, and escaped back inside before she could be drawn into a longer (or even wierder) conversation.


	19. Epilogue

"They're here! They're here!" The cry went up as the Bentley pulled to a stop outside the gate and eight-year-old Jonathan pelted out with the rest of the children.

Beth stepped out after them, just to keep an eye out. She hadn't realised it was raining and was about to resign herself to getting wet, when it stopped hitting her. She turned warily, but it was only one of the older, more distant, relatives holding an umbrella over both of them. She looked faintly familiar, but also had one of those faces that you forget as soon as you look away. Beth couldn't put a name to the face, but it didn't seem to matter. There was always such a crowd here, she would no doubt pick it up in time. Eight visits had instilled an ability to roll with things, as Newton had once suggested, but it hadn't buried Beth's instinctive curiousity.

Now she smiled tentatively at the umbrella holder. "Thanks..."

"You're welcome, my dear. Please, call me Mx Ellison*. She/her pronouns." Mx Ellison smiled. Creases at the corners of her eyes and mouth suggested that she was always smiling. "They do look happy, don't they."

Beth looked over at Aziraphale and Crowley, and the crowd of laughing, rain-spattered, children surrounding them. "They do." Something deep inside was telling her very firmly not to ask the questions spilling out of her heart.

"Anathema insisted on talking to me face to face, so I came, but I shouldn't stay long, or she'll read me the riot act again over not talking to my children enough. I don't get over here as often as I'd like to," Mx Ellison was saying, her soft voice cradling the words. "She's a better mother than I am. And grandmother too. I suppose I'm something of a butterfly, if a butterfly knew exactly where and when to flap her wings to create the desired effect. A conversation on a wall, a moment of instinctive kindness, a child as stubborn and rebellious as his father, a little extra slipped into the miracle budget at the last moments. Do give them my love, won't you? Keep the umbrella." And with that, she was gone.

Jonathan paused for a moment as he dashed past. "Come on, Mum, don't just stand there like you've seen a ghost!"

Beth shook herself and followed him in. It wasn't, after all, a ghost that she had seen, and she had a message to pass on.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> *Kyrie Eleison (Lord have mercy): a common phrase used in prayers during formal Christian worship.


End file.
